Walter Sorge

EBTH E X H I B I T is pleased to present an impressive art collection by recently deceased artist Walter Sorge. A Canadian-born artist, Sorge was a Modernist whose work exhibits many facets, periods, and styles, however he was foremost a formalist creating both gestural abstractions and geometric Color Field compositions. He worked in a variety of mediums, but was also a very accomplished printmaker in the mid to late 20th century. Some of his compositions may recall the work of renowned Abstract Expressionists Hans Hofmann, his mentor Stanley William Hayter, and Lee Krasner’s circular compositions. This collection presents the breadth of Sorge’s oeuvre, including a series of prints, compositions from his Dancing Figures series, watercolors from his series of Chinese subjects, paintings of his studio while studying in Paris, and textural Color Field compositions.

Canadian-born artist Walter Sorge was a Modernist whose work exhibits many facets, periods, and styles, however he was foremost a formalist creating both gestural abstractions and geometric Color Field compositions. He worked in a variety of mediums, but was also a very accomplished printmaker in the mid to late 20th century. Sorge received both his B.A. and M.A. at UCLA, and went on to receive his Ed.D. degrees in Fine Arts and Art Education from Columbia University. He worked in the famed Atelier 17 in Paris as an apprentice to the celebrated Surrealist painter and printmaker Stanley William Hayter who had a strong influence on his printmaking. After working in Paris, he returned to the United States to create and teach art.

In 1985 Sorge took a year of sabbatical in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China, where he produced over 100 watercolors influenced by the Chinese tradition, many of which bear a red seal of his name in Chinese characters. In 1994, he took another sabbatical in Israel, during which he produced a series of works featuring Israeli locals, landscapes, and cityscapes. In short, his work has been significantly influenced by his life-long travels.

As an instructor, he served as head of the Art Departments at Kentucky Southern College in Louisville and at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, and chairman of the Art Department at Eastern Illinois University. Throughout his career, Sorge had many solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions both nationally and internationally in New York, Ottawa, France, New Mexico, Kentucky, California, England, Israel, and Turkey among other places. Some institutions that have exhibited and collected his work include the Metropolitan Center in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Vancouver Art Gallery, National Fine Arts in Bermuda, and the J.B. Speed Art Museum in Louisville.